Tag: Hallyu

Finally! I got the chance to watch The (arguably) Best Looking Bunch in Idols Universe’s concert (it’s the title I crowned them after having watched too many episodes of Inkigayo).

2PM World Tour ‘Go Crazy’ 2015 was my first K-Pop concert experience and I was really impressed. It’s unfortunate that I didn’t know them earlier. Had I known them as well as I do now, I would’ve made time to watch their performance in the Blackberry’s Live & Rockin’ Concert in 2011. Back then, it was only Suede that attracted me to go.

The show started at 6.30 PM sharp and it lasted for 2,5 hours. Pretty long I say. But due to my stupidity, I only managed to get into the concert hall when it was almost the second half of the show. I have to admit, these boys didn’t disappoint. Based on my previous experiences watching boyband concerts which all happened to be the ‘first-world countries’ boybands’ (LMAO), I think this was the first time that I felt truly mind-blown.

The problem with those first-world boybands is that I often feel that they don’t give their all at times. They are often caught laughing or giggling from inside jokes at the back of the stage. I get that they might be exhausted from all the shows they have to do, but here’s the problem. Some fans have to save a lot of money just to see their idols live and up close. For some it even takes months or even years to do so. So if they’re acting like “What country is this again? Oh, we might as well make a stop while we’re around”, that’s just unacceptable. New Kids On The Block was kind of like that when they had their first concert here back in 1992.

It was a completely different case with these boys. Throughout the concert (which I only got to watch half part of it), I hardly caught them fooling around with each other, at least not until the very end of the show. There was also no hint of boredom and tiredness. Everyone focused on entertaining the audience. So was when they had to bid farewell, it came across as a sincere goodbye. No repetitive saccharine sweet words of parting. My guess is (which still needs to be proven by watching more K-Pop shows) that it has something to do with Korean psyche to serve others pleasantly. It translated seemingly genuine as “we are here because of you” rather than just a mere lip-service.

The only problem I had was that I didn’t grow up listening to their music. I have no memory whatsoever about them in my adolescent years. So even if their performance was mind-blowing and hard-hitting, it didn’t really hit me that hard, though it did leave a wide smile on my face.

But then again, it could be just a problem with the sound and the melody. I can totally be immersed in Kim Dong Ryul’s songs because they give the same feeling of memory melancholia like those of The Carpenters’, for instance.

Thank God for Photoshop, filters and presets! I’m no purist, and at times like these, they come in really handy.

Most K-Pop live shows in Jakarta typically won’t allow the audience to bring any type of camera, at least the ones that I have gone to (except for 2PM’s, I think). Bummer. So you only have your smartphone camera to rely on. Unless you’re in the front row seats, chance is you’ll get nothing but a stage, the screens and a tiny figure of the star(s), or pixelated images due to forced zoom in, which I always try to avoid.

Good thing when he switched roles from So Ji Sub the actor into So Ji Sub the rapper, he asked the crowd to join ‘the party’. Yah, who wants to sit while dancing to hiphop tunes, that’d be weird. So everyone got up and some even swarmed to the front of the stage, especially those in the front section, including me, hence the almost close up shots.